


i will think it's magic and i hope you'll agree

by orphan_account



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 21:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4452227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His words are clumsy and inarticulate and faltering but true, all of them true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will think it's magic and i hope you'll agree

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Light a Roman Candle With Me" by fun.

 “Don’t squeal,” Jake says, and opens the box.

Charles, much to Jake’s surprise, does _not,_ in fact, squeal; what comes out instead is a very high whine that manages to make its way past tightly closed lips.

“That was a squeal.”

“No, it was not. That was a slow-motion scream. Jake!” Charles jumps up a little, trying to keep from falling off the edge of the seat and off the edge of the world in sheer glee. “That’s the first time you’ve ever bought a ring that isn’t made of candy!”

“Second time,” Jake corrects. “But this is definitely the first that cost over five dollars. _Significantly_ over five dollars. Why are these things so expensive? What’re they made of? Gold?”

“Actually – ”

“They are. I know. I know what rings are.”

“When’s the wedding going to be? Have you started planning it yet? Oh my God, can I pick the floral arrangements?”

“Charles!” Jake cuts his frenzied wedding-fueled mania off short, closing the box quickly just in case someone who wouldn’t literally rather die than reveal one of his secrets sees it. “I haven’t actually _done_ it yet, okay? I don’t know if she’ll say yes.”

The butterflies in his stomach (which are probably made of steel or something judging by the way they’re affecting him) are, if possible, tripled by the glint in Charles’ eye. “Oh! Right! Sorry. I’m just so excited! I love weddings and I love you, and Amy – you _are_ proposing to Amy, right?”

“Duh,” says Jake, and thinks to himself that he needs another drink or three. “Who else would I be proposing to?”

“Sorry! Sorry. I thought you might be a polygamist or something. Every woman deserves some Jake in their life.”

“My uncle was a polygamist,” comes the familiar drawl, and Gina slides into the booth next to Charles, cutting into their conversation neatly in the way that only she can. “When he was murdered he left a note that said his wife did it. Nobody knows who really killed him to this day.”

A somber silence infused with a healthy dose of awkwardness.

“So,” she carries on, perking up. “You guys were talkin’ about a wedding?”

“No, we weren’t.” Charles is quick to refute – which, ironically, only solidifies Gina’s suspicions.

Gina grins at Jake. “Congratulations, Jakey! Looks like you’ve really upped your game since middle school.”

“Gina,” Jake says through gritted teeth. “We don’t talk about middle school.”

“What happened in middle school?” And oh, great, Rosa’s joining them, too – sliding in to sit next to Jake. “Keep talking, Gina.”

“I’ll email you about it later,” Gina says with a lopsided grin. “Keep your evening open. It’s a long story. But I’m more interested in Jake’s decision to sleep with Stick-Butt Santiago, and his subsequent decision to _continue_ sleeping with her.” Her voice drops to an ominous whisper. _“Forever.”_

Rosa laughs and Jake takes a very long drink.

“Look, you guys,” he manages when he recovers from the sudden burning sensation. “P _lease_ don’t tell Amy about this. Or anyone. I’m – I want to do it in a special way. I want to really surprise her. Y’know?”

“I know what’d be special,” Charles suggests. “Piñatas filled with small pieces of paper that say _‘Marry me’_ on them!”

“Okay,” Jake says. “That would be a good idea if Amy were a nine-year-old girl who was into the destruction of thousands of trees just for the sake of a marriage proposal.”

“Does that mean you don’t like it?”

“That means I’m even more scared to ask what Gina and Rosa think.”

After three diagrams drawn on napkins, nine more rounds of drinks, a blind vote in which nobody knows who voted for what because everyone’s eyes are closed, two debates about which Taylor Swift song is the best, and a bar-wide poll involving needless metaphors in an attempt to mask what the poll is really about, Jake ends up with a very detailed and _very_ expensive proposal idea that Gina, Rosa, and Charles can all agree on.

He has no idea how they got involved in this – and why he _let_ them, frankly – but, as it turns out, it’s very irresponsible to leave a caged lion at your home without supervision. (“Then what’s the cage for? I mean, it’s a _caged_ lion, it’s in the description – ”)

* * *

 

“So, how was work?”

Amy looks up from her phone and Jake starts frantically thinking of things to say that are interesting enough that they can distract her from the fact that he is taking the very long way home in order to buy Team Proposal more time (Charles has a way of using self-invented terms so often that those around him accidentally fall into using it, too, which Jake resents but has no way of resisting).

“Work was fine, I guess. Captaining a precinct is difficult. So much paperwork.”

A beat. Jake grins into the rearview mirror. “You like it.”

“I – do not.”

“You _love_ paperwork, Santiago, ya nerd.”

“Fine,” Amy shoots back, and he can hear the suppressed smile in her voice. “It’s kind of fun sometimes. Fifty per cent of the time.”

“Try eighty,” says Jake, and Amy laughs.

He looks over at her, and she looks back at him, and his heart skips a beat, as it always does whenever he sees her – which is just stupid, or something. Jake doesn’t have a way with words, doesn’t know how to string them together to form _something_ that can convey even a small fraction of what he feels for her.

“Jake, you’ve taken us all the way across town,” Amy says, looking around. “And now you’re looping back. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Jake says, and thinks about the (literally) explosive show that he has planned back at their house, and of how the only way he can think of to express to her how _much_ she is to him is through something like that – something bright and colorful and full of life, because that’s how she makes him feel. He’d give away everything he had, he’d give away everything he ever was, if it meant he could make her as happy as she’s made him. And that’s a fact.

He’s thinking about all of this when he pulls over by the side of the road in a part of town he has little to no knowledge about. The box in his pocket seems to weigh him down. Amy looks over at him, confused, and Jake knows that no part of this is planned or detailed or anything that Amy thrives on.

Doesn’t that make it oddly perfect?

“Jake, what’re you doing?”

“Get out of the car.”

“What?”

“Get out of the car.”

Amy looks confused but complies, stepping out of the car and onto the pavement. Jake quickly dials Charles’ number, which proves to be difficult considering how much his fingers are shaking. Charles picks up on the third ring.

“Jake? You’re late.”

“Charles. Tell everyone to cancel everything. Proposal’s off.”

“What? _What?!_ You’re not going to do it?!”

“No, I just – um. Y’know what, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you tomorrow. Just get everyone out of our house, apologize for the inconvenience, whatever the hell else you need to do.”

“J – ”

“Bye.”

He hangs up and Amy knocks on the car window curiously.

“Jake?”

His palms instantly begin to expel sweat and he reaches into his pocket as he gets out and walks around the car slowly to join her.

She’s looking critically at the shoddy architecture of the building they’re standing by when he gets down on one knee.

“This place is really – ”

Then she sees him and her breath catches as she freezes up. Jake looks up at her, earnest and open, and thinks about Rosa and Gina and Charles and god, does he _really_ have no other friends?

He fumbles with the box as he opens it and the ring glints in the dim moonlight. Amy doesn’t look at it. Her eyes are trained firmly on his face.

He thinks about all the pomp and circumstance and realizes that in the end, all he wants is **her.**

Jake takes a deep breath and speaks.

“Amy Santiago, I can’t find the words to express how I feel about you. And I know that you aren’t into the whole cliché thing, I get that, but you know what? Love is a cliché. Love has been done to death. It’s the same thing, over and over again. It’s terrible. It’s torture and you feel like you’re being eaten alive every second of it. No offense. I love you and stuff, I mean … you know that. I’ll never stop making sure you know that.

“But – I guess there’s a reason why it happens so much. Why humans just cannot stop doing it. Because it’s persistent and awful and always there, and you can’t go anywhere without finding it somewhere. I’m so glad and so lucky that I found it with you. So – uh – will you marry me, or – or whatever?”

His words are clumsy and inarticulate and faltering but true, all of them true, and he bleeds with it – he wants to bare his soul to her, he _wants_ her to know everything about him, he wants to know everything about her – and that’s what trust is, he supposes.

Amy looks terrified.

The few moments of silence following the longest and most earnest speech he’s ever given are terrible because all of Jake’s fears catch up to him in that moment; the fear that she might say no and walk out on him, and he’ll let her take everything he has because he’s madly, stupidly, _crazy_ in love with her and he probably won’t ever stop.

Then her face breaks into an awe-filled smile, and Jake’s heart explodes with delight and with adoration as she nods and manages to breathe out: “Yes.”

“Yeah?” And he can hardly believe it –

“Yes.”

Jake shoves the box clumsily back into his pocket as he rises quickly and Amy immediately throws her arms around his neck, laughing as she presses her lips to every inch of his face that she can touch. He grabs her by the waist and lifts her off the ground, and for the first time in his life, he feels like he might be enough.


End file.
